Ferulary

adj, noun

adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Schoolmastership. obsolete, rare, uncountable
Adjective
  1. 1
    Characteristic of a schoolmaster, schoolmasterish. obsolete, rare

    "Even academic translators of Jonson’s era like Barten Holyday (Persins, 1616) were not literalists. Holyday tells us that he freed himself from “ferulary [‘schoolmasterish’] supersitition to the letter” and took “the ancient libertie of a Translator [to use] a moderate paraphrase, where the obscurities did more require it.”"

Example

More examples

"Even academic translators of Jonson’s era like Barten Holyday (Persins, 1616) were not literalists. Holyday tells us that he freed himself from “ferulary [‘schoolmasterish’] supersitition to the letter” and took “the ancient libertie of a Translator [to use] a moderate paraphrase, where the obscurities did more require it.”"

Etymology

From ferule + -ary.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.